Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Typical Thanksgiving

And without doubt, I will get the "so when are you finally going to get remarried and have some babies" question...after all, even my 18 year old cousins are married and pregnant. I'm the only one without kids and I am 28.

I get that a lot at family get togethers too. I'm 27 and will be getting engaged soon. My side of the family is the only one with kids. My sister won't have them, my brother is single, and the leaves people looking at me. Fortunately my cousin who is younger than me has three kids but has never been married, so they don't look at me too hard.

My typical thanksgiving runs like this:

I typically show up around 10am. Some of my family is already there. Some of my family is coming down from Connecticut, the first group gets there in the morning. The second in the evening right in time for pie. The second groups is usually committed to Thanksgiving dinner in Connecticut and come down afterwards.

The family is split between several groups. The older women are in the kitchen "cooking". Mostly this is family gossip, although some food is put on the stove, and giblets are eaten. My dad and some of my male cousins are watching football. My uncle and everyone else is watching James Bond movies on TBS.

My cousins' kids are running around everywhere and driving people nuts. They aren't watching anything, just sort of bouncing between rooms like pre-pubescent pinballs leaving a trail of toys like plastic caltrops lurking for the unwary barefoot adult. Truth be told, they remind me of me when I was their age.

Dinner is always late but yummy. Typically afterwards we take the kids outside to burn up energy and the adults snooze off the meal. At least one person sneaks out for "coffee" and a cigarette he was supposed to have quit months ago. At some point we start playing games and that lasts until the we start making sandwiches from leftover turkey and the pies comes out.

More games come after that. Lately its been dice, but Uno, Dominoes, Rummikub, and Aggravation were not unheard of. At some point the kids get forced into bed. They don't actually go to bed, lord knows I didn't when I was their age, but they get sent to their respective rooms and the adults get time together without kids. Usually the parents split their time between talking with adults and yelling at their kids to go to sleep.

Finally my brother and I leave and retire to sanctity of own quiet apartments. Yay for us!